Chrome 59 Released with Settings Now in Material Design

The Chromium team within Google has released Chrome 59, the latest major build of the browser for Windows, MacOS and Linux. The update is rolling out now and if you have Chrome installed, the update should come to you over the course of the next few days. If you want to force the issue, just type chrome://help in the browser and it will automatically download the update immediately.

There are two big changes in this update along with the normal raft of bug and security fixes. The first is the injection of more Material Design. The Settings page within Chrome is now by default in Material Design. The ability to turn on this feature manually in Chrome has been there since Chrome 57 but it has required a manual flag change deep within the settings of the browser. Now it is on by default in Chrome 59.

The other big feature change is for those who are on Macs. Chrome will not use the native notification feature within MacOS for push notifications from the browser. This means the blocky style banners that would pop-up are gone and replace with the more native-to-MacOS looking notifications.

Chrome 59 marked the release where some 16 developers and agencies were paid various bounties for finding bugs and vulnerabilities within the browser. These are all listed in the Release Notes for the update.